The invention relates to a refrigerating plant, comprising a refrigerant circuit, in which an overall mass flow of a refrigerant is circulated, a high-side refrigerant-cooling heat exchanger, which is disposed in the refrigerant circuit, an expansion cooling device, which is disposed in the refrigerant circuit and in the active state cools the overall mass flow of the refrigerant and thereby produces a main mass flow of liquid refrigerant and an additional mass flow of gaseous refrigerant, a reservoir for the main mass flow, at least one normal cooling stage, which removes a normal cooling mass flow from the reservoir and has a normal cooling expansion element and a low-side normal cooling heat exchanger, provided downstream of said expansion element and providing refrigerating capacity for the normal cooling, an intense cooling stage, which removes an overall intense cooling mass flow from the reservoir and has an intense cooling expansion element and a downstream intense cooling heat exchanger providing refrigerating capacity, and also with an intense cooling compressor unit downstream of this intense cooling heat exchanger, and at least one refrigerant compressor unit, which is disposed in the refrigerant circuit and compresses the refrigerant of the main mass flow and of the additional mass flow to high pressure.
Such a refrigerating plant, which is suitable in particular for carbon dioxide as the refrigerant, is known from DE 10 2004 038 640 A1, the efficiency in this refrigerating plant not being optimal, in particular in connection with the intense cooling stage that is operated.
It is therefore an object of the invention to improve a refrigerating plant of the type described at the beginning to the extent that it has a better efficiency.